Free The New Uncanny by Etgar Keret, Ramsey Campbell, Hanif Kureishi, Christopher Priest, Jane Rogers, A.S. Byatt, Matthew Holness, Adam Marek

crisp shell, thousands of sticky, black grains that I had to scoop into a bucket and carry upstairs and out into the back garden. Beneath the asphalt I was into the raw earth of the world under my house, which I dug down into. Then when I had gone far enough, I leveled off and finished with a layer of good cement. It was hard, aching work, and took me several weeks (I’m not as strong as I was). But at the end of my work I had a room, below my living room, that was its proportional twin.
    It occurred to me then to set about duplication of the room above in other ways. Firstly I bought floorboards to nail over the joists of the cellar ceiling to form a perfect replica of the floor above. In effect I now had two floors back to back. Onto this upside-down floor I tacked rugs identical to those in my living room, and in the same position. I bought furniture identical to the furniture in my living room, and placed it on the upside down floor of the cellar, in identical positions once again. This was a harder task, and one I could only just manage on my own. Bolting a settee to the ceiling of a cellar is work for a strong man. I will not go into details about how I managed it, except to say that I adapted techniques I read about in an account of the building of Salisbury Cathedral. Nor will I detail the many journeys I had to make in order to find chairs identical to those that furnished the living room. But the exquisite delight I felt when I achieved my aim, when I found my replica suite, my coffee-table’s double, the lamp-stand’s long lost and long-forgotten twin, in some distant junk shop or car-boot, was indescribable. Though perhaps it is not unlike that experienced by an actual twin, who has been deprived of the knowledge all his life, to find himself reunited with his brother from the womb.
    I now had everything on the floor of my living room reproduced exactly upside down on the ceiling of the cellar, bolted fast, the cushions of the seats stitched to them, and all other precautions taken to make a convincing upside-down room, identical to the original.
    And so I began work on the walls. Bare brick in the cellar, I plastered them as best I could (I’m no handyman, really), and after a reasonable period of drying out, papered them with the rose pattern I had so long lived with (and which was very, very hard to find). The paintings that hang on them were also difficult to reproduce, and I had to try my hand at copying one of the simpler ones myself, the result of which endeavour surprised and pleased me. It took me several years of hard work to reproduce everything in the living room. One thing I couldn’t reproduce, of course, was the view from the front bay window. I had to satisfy myself that drawn curtains would do. Eventually I worked out how to make them hang convincingly, which involved a hidden rail at the bottom of the curtain, so that in reality the curtains hang downwards into the pelmet. I succeeded very well, I think, in giving them a convincingly unfastened look.
    The most enjoyable touches were the two light fittings (one a chandelier) that in the real room hang from the ceiling on thin lengths of flex. Again, trompe l’oeil was involved in producing flex that would hang upwards and support a shade; moreover, I fashioned a modest chandelier, just like the one above ground, and managed, with glue and solder, to make the crystals hang upwards instead of downwards. I think if there is any true crowning glory to my upside-down room, it is in the upside-down chandelier, with all its crystals pouring casually upwards as if there was nothing untoward in their world at all. Of course, I wired the lights up to work just like the lights in the real living room.
    Completed, my project gave me many moments of unspeakable joy. Just sitting in my arm chair, knowing that beneath the floor there was another armchair, hanging, in a room where everything else hung that should have stood, and which stood that should have